The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham

by Esther Hicks

The first Law, the Law of Attraction, says: That which is like unto itself, is drawn. While this may seem like a rather simple statement, it defines the most powerful Law in the Universe—a Law that affects all things at all times. Nothing exists that is unaffected by this powerful Law.

The second Law, the Science of Deliberate Creation, says: That which I give thought to and that which I believe or expect—is. In short, you get what you are thinking about, whether you want it or not.

The third Law, the Art of Allowing, says: I am that which I am, and I am willing to allow all others to be that which they are. When you are willing to allow others to be as they are, even in their not allowing of you, then you will be an Allower, but it is not likely that you will reach that point until you first come to understand how it is you get what you get.

Only when you understand that another cannot be a part of your experience unless you invite them in through your thoughts (or through your attention to them), and that circumstances cannot be a part of your experience unless you invite them to you through your thought (or through your observation of them), will you be the Allower that you wanted to be when you came forth into this expression of life.

Once you understand that all people, circumstances, and events are invited into your experience by you, through your thought, you will begin to live your life as you intended when you made the decision to come forth into this physical body.

When you say, “Birds of a feather flock together,” you are actually talking about the Law of Attraction. You see it evidenced when you wake up feeling unhappy, and then throughout the day things get worse and worse, and at the end of the day you say, “I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.” You see the Law of Attraction evidenced in your society when you see that the one who speaks most about illness has illness; when you see that the one who speaks most about prosperity has prosperity.

Nothing merely shows up in your experience. You attract it—all of it. No exceptions.

Because the Law of Attraction is responding to the thoughts that you hold at all times, it is accurate to say that you are creating your own reality.

To better understand the Law of Attraction, see yourself as a magnet attracting unto you the essence of that which you are thinking and feeling. And so, if you are feeling fat, you cannot attract thin. If you feel poor, you cannot attract prosperity, and so on. It defies Law.

The more you come to understand the power of the Law of Attraction, the more interest you will have in deliberately directing your thoughts— for you get what you think about, whether you want it or not.

Without exception, that which you give thought to is that which you begin to invite into your experience. When you think a little thought of something that you want, through the Law of Attraction, that thought grows larger and larger, and more and more powerful. When you think a thought of something you do not want, the Law of Attraction draws unto it, and it grows larger and larger, also. And so, the larger the thought grows, the more power it draws unto it, and then the more certain you are to receive the experience.

there is no such thing as “No.” To clarify, when you look at something and shout, “No, I don’t want to experience that; go away!” then what you are actually doing is calling it into your experience, for there is no such thing as “No” in an attraction-based Universe. Your attention to it says, “Yes, come to me, this thing I do not want!”

things do not manifest into your experience instantaneously. There is a wonderful buffer of time between when you begin to think about something and the time it manifests. That buffer of time gives you the opportunity to redirect your attention more and more in the direction of the things that you actually do want to manifest in your experience.

You are here to create the world around you that you choose, while you allow the world—as others choose it to be—to exist, also. And while their choices in no way hinder your own choices, your attention to what they are choosing does affect your vibration, and therefore your own point of attraction.

Your attention to subjects, your activation of thoughts, and the Law of Attraction’s response to those thoughts is responsible for every person, every event, and every circumstance that comes into your experience. All of these things are brought into your experience through a sort of powerful magnetic funnel as they are vibrational matches to your own thoughts.

You get the essence of what you are thinking about, whether it is something you want or something you do not want.

Whether you are focusing upon things you want or things you do not want, the evidence of your thoughts continually flows toward you.

There is a part of you, a Non-Physical part of you—we call it your Inner Being—that exists right now while you are here in this physical body. Your emotions are your physical indication of your relationship with your Inner Being.

In other words, the better you feel, the better your point of attraction, and the better things are turning out for you.

Rather than trying to monitor your thoughts, we encourage you to simply pay attention to how you are feeling.

And so, simply by paying attention to the way you are feeling, you will know, at all times, the direction from which your powerful magnetic Being is attracting the subject of whatever you are giving thought to.

If you are not sensitive to the way you are feeling, then you will not consciously notice that you are thinking in the direction of what you do not want, and you may very well attract something very large and powerful that you do not want that will be more difficult to deal with later.

When you give your attention to a subject and you feel only positive emotion about it as you do so, it will come very quickly into your experience. Sometimes we hear our physical friends speaking the words want or desire while at the same time feeling doubt or fear that their desire cannot be achieved. From our point of view, it is not possible to purely desire something while feeling negative emotion.

It is our desire to help you understand that you can get to wherever you want to be from wherever you are, no matter where you are or what your current state of Being. The most important thing to understand is that your mental state of Being, or your attitude, in the moment is the basis from which you will attract more.

In order for things to change, you have to see them as you want them to be rather than continuing to observe them as they are.

In order to effect true positive change in your experience, you must disregard how things are—as well as how others are seeing you—and give more of your attention to the way you prefer things to be.

Most of you have been seeing yourself, not only through your own eyes (in fact, not even primarily through your own eyes), but through the eyes of others; therefore, many of you are not now currently in the state of Being that you want to be.

Your state of Being is the way you feel about yourself at any point in time.

parents—if you will use your time, with one of your intentions being to collect data and look for things that you like that you may bring into your Workshop—then you will find that every day is one of fun. Have you ever gone on a shopping spree where you had some money in your pocket and your intent was to find something to buy? And as you were looking around, although there were many things that you did not want, your intent was to find something that you did want to exchange for the money. Well, that is the way we would like you to look at every day of your life experience . . . as if you have a pocketful of something that you are exchanging for this data that you are collecting.

when you go into your Workshop, you can begin assimilating the data, and as you do so, you will prepare a picture of yourself from which you will begin attracting into your experience the essence of that which has been pleasing you.

If you are able to grasp the knowledge that your real work—no matter what other activities you are performing—is to look around for things that you want with the intent of bringing them into your Workshop in order to create your vision of yourself from which you will attract—then you will come to know that there is nothing that you cannot be, do, or have.

Being aware that the Law of Attraction exists is the most important part of utilizing it deliberately. Since the Law of Attraction is always responding to your thoughts, a deliberate focusing of your thought is important.

By staying focused on a subject of your choosing, your point of attraction on that topic will become much more powerful than if your mind moves from subject to subject. There is tremendous power in focusing.

When you spend time with those who see your flaws, then their perception of your flaws often becomes your point of attraction.

Let us say you have been thinking about something that you do not want, and you have been doing that for a while, so you have a rather strong negative momentum going. It would not be possible for you to suddenly begin thinking the opposite thought. In fact, from where you are standing, you would not even have access to those kinds of thoughts—but you could choose a thought that feels slightly better than the thoughts you have been thinking, and then another, and then another, until gradually you could change the direction of your thoughts.

Disappointment is communication from your Inner Being letting you know that that which you are focused upon is not what you want. If you are sensitive to the way that you are feeling, then the disappointment itself will let you know that what you are thinking about is not what you want to experience.

you add power to those things you do not want through your attention to them.

Your attention to anything is drawing it closer to you.

The more you think about illness and worry about illness—the more you attract illness.

The power of the Creative Workshop Process is that the more attention you give to a subject, the more powerful it becomes, the easier it is to think about it, and the more of it begins to appear in your experience. Whenever you are aware that you are feeling negative emotion, it is important to understand that while you may not be aware of it, you have been conducting a negative Workshop.

Whenever you catch yourself feeling negative emotion, we would suggest that you try to gently pull your thoughts around to something that you do want to experience, and little by little you will change your habit of thought regarding those things. Whenever you are able to identify something that you do not want, you can always then identify what is it that you do want. And as you do that again and again, your pattern of thought—on every subject that is important to you—will shift more in the direction of what you do want. In other words, you will gradually build bridges from any current beliefs that are about things you do not want over to beliefs about things you do want.

Whenever you feel negative emotion, it is always telling you that whatever you are thinking about is important, and that you are thinking about the opposite of what you really desire.

If someone is in your life, you have attracted them. And while it is sometimes difficult to believe, you also attract everything about your experience with them—for nothing can come into your experience without your personal attraction of it.

It is not possible to push things that you do not want away from you, because in your pushing against them you are actually activating the vibration of them and therefore attracting them. Everything in this Universe is attraction based. In other words, there is no such thing as exclusion. When you shout “No!” at those things you do not want, you are actually inviting those unwanted things into your experience. When you shout “Yes!” at those things you do want, you are actually inviting those wanted things into your experience.

If you are resisting anything, you are focused upon it, pushing against it, and activating the vibration of it—and therefore attracting it.

One of the most common concerns I’ve heard over the years is people saying, “Well, I just don’t know what I want.” How do we know what we want? Abraham: You have come forth into this physical life experience with the intention of experiencing the variety and contrast for the very purpose of determining your own personal preferences and desires.

Your life experience is continually helping you identify what you want. Even as you are keenly aware of something that you do not want, in that moment you are becoming more clear about that which you do want. And it is helpful to make the statement “I want to know what I want,” because in your conscious awareness of that intention, the attraction process is intensified.

We do not believe that people are having such a difficult time deciding what they want as much as they do not believe that they can receive what they want. . . . Because they have not understood the powerful Law of Attraction, and because they have not been consciously aware of their own vibrational offering, they have not experienced any conscious control over the things that have come into their own experience. Many have experienced the discomfort of really wanting something and working very hard to try to achieve it, only to continue to hold it away because they were offering thoughts of the lack of it more predominantly than thoughts of the receiving of it. So, over time, they begin to associate the receiving of wanted things with hard work, struggle, and disappointment.

To make the statement “I want to know what I want!” is a first and powerful step in Deliberate Creation. But then, a deliberate directing of your attention to the things you want to attract into your experience must come next.

Few realize that they can control the way they feel and positively affect the things that come into their life experience by deliberately directing their thoughts. But because they are not accustomed to doing that, it takes practice.